Circl

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  No more awkward networking.

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  Build your profile.

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  Speaker profile.

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  Conversation starters for you.

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  Your next connection is here

Building an AI-Powered Networking Assistant

We developed Circl, an AI-powered networking platform designed to help students start meaningful conversations at professional events. The app analyzes a speaker’s background and generates personalized, context-aware “icebreaker” questions before users even say hello. By turning networking anxiety into confidence, Circl helps students connect more authentically and effectively.

Inspiration As students at San Jose State University in the heart of Silicon Valley, we attend many networking events. However, we noticed a clear disconnect; while everyone wants to connect, conversations often feel awkward and superficial. Research shows that 80% of professionals value networking, yet many struggle with preparation and knowing what to say. We were inspired to build Circl to bridge this gap and turn networking into real opportunities, starting with our own community.

What We Learned

Throughout this project, we learned about:

The importance of understanding user pain points, such as networking anxiety. How AI can be used to create personalized and meaningful interactions. The role of clear prompt design in generating high-quality AI outputs. How to translate a qualitative problem into a measurable business opportunity. How hard and fun it is to build our product using AI.

How We Built It

We developed Circl using:

Framework: Base44 to build a clean, dashboard-style interface and manage backend logic. AI Integration: OpenAI API to generate personalized networking questions. Prompt Engineering: Carefully designed prompts to connect a student’s goals with a professional’s background.

Challenges We Faced

Prompt Quality: Ensuring the AI generated specific and meaningful questions rather than generic suggestions. Technical Barriers: As a non-technical team, integrating APIs and managing data flow was challenging. Time Constraints: Building a functional product within a 24-hour hackathon required rapid decision-making and iteration.

Despite these challenges, we successfully created a working application that addresses a real-world problem.

Accomplishments

We are most proud of building a real solution to a problem we personally experienced. As non-STEM students, creating a fully functional AI application from scratch was a major achievement. Seeing Circl generate the exact kind of insightful questions we wished we had during our own past networking experiences was a powerful “aha!” moment. We didn’t just build an app; we created a tool that helps students network with confidence.

What’s Next

Our next step is to test Circl in real-world settings. We plan to launch a beta version at the SJSU Career Fair and gather feedback from early users. From there, we aim to expand by partnering with university career centers across the U.S., making meaningful networking accessible to students everywhere.

Built With

• base44
• cursor
• openai